Take a leisurely walk around our downtown and you’ll notice a few things. First, there’s a 15-foot-tall metal wall encircling most of it. Not easy to miss that.
Second, there’s a bunch of dead folks walking around all over the place. It’s not easy to miss seeing those either — they move really slowly.
Third, storefronts are already decorated for Christmas. There’s not a snowflake, or snowball in sight. (It is eighty degrees after all.) So one of these seems really strange to me. Guess which one?
Unless you keep snowballs in the freezer, like we did back on Flamingo Street, not finding snowballs when it’s so warm outside isn’t strange. What about all those dead folks and giant wall? Those aren’t so strange either. A hit television show is filmed here, and they need that wall to keep those dead folks out of town. So what has happened in our downtown that is so odd?
Sorry, it’s just too early for Christmas.
Starting to decorate for Christmas in October just isn’t right. Next year I’m sure some storeowners will start in September. Eventually we’ll be able to buy our tree and decorations in July. It’ll be one-stop shopping for Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. But it’s just wrong. Besides, starting to sell items in October for Christmas skips right over one of the best holidays of the year — Halloween. Back on Flamingo Street, Halloween was the one holiday it was never too early to start decorating for.
When the calendar turned over to October, my three brothers and I started to dig the bottomless pit in our front yard. We finished in only a week. That’s how long it took for us all to get blisters on our hands and decide it was deep enough. I know a bottomless pit only a foot deep isn’t actually bottomless, but Georgia red clay is hard as a brick when it hasn’t rained for a month. With the pit covered with pine straw, it was time to assemble Spooky, the flying ghost.
Goofy Steve was the keeper of Spooky. With help from his dad, he built the remote control cable system allowing him to fly continuously across our yard — Spooky not Goof. We found out the first year we lived on Flamingo Street Goof wasn’t a great flying ghost.
The week before Halloween, Goof tried flying across our yard but only made it halfway. He crashed to the ground in a heap of rope and sheet and then lay there screaming. I still feel bad about that. Guess I should’ve used a better knot when I tied my end of the rope around that tree.
It really wasn’t my fault though. My inability to tie a proper knot was because of all those chocolate chip cookies Bubba Hanks brought over.
Bubba’s mom made the best chocolate chip cookies on all of Flamingo Street. It was gonna take an entire day to construct and then test the ghost zip line, and Bubba wanted to help. What better way than with a plate or two of his mom’s cookies?
Guess I should’ve paid more attention to knot tying than cookie eating. It’s hard to tie a knot with only one hand tying and the other holding cookies.
It took all month to finish our yard decorations of gravestones, scarecrows, witches, and helium-filled balloons. The balloons were Goof’s idea. We let him use them because we all felt sorry he broke his arm during the ghost ride.
That first Halloween, Goof dressed up as a clown with a broken arm, Bubba was a snowman, Neighbor Thomas was Batman, Blabbermouth Betsy looked just like a Raggedy Ann doll, and my three brothers and I were Pirates.
Not gonna tell you what the kid we called Booger came as, but he was a good kid nonetheless.
And, of course, Bradley McAllister (aka Down the Street Bully Brad) dressed up as he did every year thereafter — a bully that stole candy.
Decorating our house and yard for Halloween and custom costume making took less than a month. So why folks buy Christmas decorations almost three months ahead of the holiday, I have no idea. Guess they’re some really slow decorators out there.
Maybe I can get the kids from Flamingo Street together (minus Bully Brad) and start a yard decorating business. From the size of all those bags leaving our downtown Christmas store, there are lots of decorations that need putting up. Wonder if Bubba’s mom still makes those delicious chocolate chip cookies.
[Rick Ryckeley has been writing stories since 2001. To read more of Rick’s stories, visit his blog: storiesbyrick.wordpress.com.]
